NBC planning 'Plain Jane' spinoff of 'Average Joe' for fall schedule

By Reality TV World staff, 04/02/2004

Still giddy over the success that its Average Joe reality show has had in improving the network's Monday nights at 10 PM ratings performance, NBC has announced that it is planning additional installments of the franchise, starting with a gender-reversed Plain Jane edition of the series which will premiere this fall.

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"We asked ourselves, why should the Average Joes have all the fun?" NBC Primetime Development President Kevin Reilly explained to his audience announcing the series at a recent advertiser meeting, according to Zap2It.com.

Dubbing NBC "The Equal Opportunity Network," Reilly explained that Plain Jane will be produced by Andrew Glassman and Stuart Krasnow, the same folks behind the first three Average Joe series, and follow a similar pattern as the network's first two Joe installments, only with the program's gender roles reversed.

Instead of featuring a beautiful woman seeking love from among a group of average looking male suitors, Plain Jane will feature a muscular handsome man being romanced a group of normal looking women. As in the Melana Scantlin and Larissa Meek editions of the series, the hunky bachelor will be asked to look past the exterior and search for inner beauty -- with a similar assortment of twists, turns, and introduction of not-so average looking women expected.

The network's third installment of its Average Joe franchise, Average Joe: Adam Returns, a rather straight-laced four-episode installment of the series, stars first series runner-up Adam Mesh and concludes this coming Monday, April 5 with a special two-hour finale. While not the ratings hit of the first installment, the program has continued to perform well for the network, premiering to 10.7 million viewers.